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Italian Market Continues to Slow but Wind Weathers Storm
For the second successive quarter the Italian mobile market saw a net loss to its customer base, a decline of 0.17m taking the total below 85m with an end-quarter figure of 84.93m. Almost a quarter of a million customers were lost in the first half of the year. As a result, annual net additions were at their lowest level for four years with a twelve-month gain of 4.08m, while proportionate growth of 5.0% was the worst figure for five years.
The Italian market remains highly stratified, with a gap of more than 10pp separating each operator from its closest rival. TIM leads the way with 35.80m customers and 42.1% market share, 11.0pp ahead of Vodafone which finished the quarter with 26.42m. Wind is 10.8pp behind Vodafone with 20.3% market share, equivalent to 17.22m customers. In fourth place is Hutchison with 6.5% market share and just under 5.50m customers.
Only two of the four operators lost customers in Q1 and Q2, and they were market leader TIM and fourth-placed Hutchison. TIM was down 0.13m in Q2, an improvement on the first-quarter loss of 0.40m but disappointing nonetheless. Meanwhile, Hutchison suffered a 0.39m loss to follow its 0.22m decline in Q1. These losses outweighed the gains made in the second half of 2007, leaving Hutchison down 0.14m compared to a year ago. TIM managed to avoid this fate, but it did see its annual net additions slashed from 3.90m to 1.48m. Vodafone also saw a substantial decline in growth: quarterly net additions in Q2 08 stood at 0.12m compared to 0.68m in Q2 07, while annual net additions were down from 2.80m to 1.67m. However, third-placed Wind has managed to maintain steady growth, with 1.07m annual net additions compared to 1.08m for the prior twelve month period.
On a proportionate basis, things look a little different. Vodafone was the fastest growing operator with an annual uplift of 6.7% compared to 6.6% for Wind, 4.3% for TIM and a loss of 2.5% for Hutchison. With Italian penetration at 146.1% at the end of Q2 08, the potential for organic growth now seems limited - although 3G growth remains strong, a 29.7% annual uplift taking the W-CDMA base to 23.03m or 27.1% of the national total.
Posted to the site on 16th October 2008
This article was extracted from The Mobile World Briefing, the weekly newsletter from The Mobile World.
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